Hometown

by Luke Walker

  So, the stairs.

  He crouched and searched on the stone floor for the plank. His fingers found it gratefully and he stood again.

  ‘Up,’ he whispered and felt for the wall. Andy made his way to the corner eight steps up, barely breathing, found the outline of the window and eased the filthy curtain back. Moonlight fell in, not illuminating much. Dirt covered the glass; Andy leaned close to it and attempted to see outside. What might have been a couple of cars were parked close to the side of the building. There was nobody in sight.

  Andy dropped the curtain, moved along the wall again and ascended to the first floor. The screams hadn’t come again and the shouts weren’t audible yet.

  This is fucking mad.

  The thought was an automatic one; it didn’t detract from the reality of the situation. The outlandishness of what was happening, of what had brought him here, the impossibility of being back in his childhood home after seeing it in visions—none of it meant anything now. All he had here was the plank of wood in his hand and the silence ahead.

  Andy eased his way forward, peered down the corridor and made out faint light. Although he couldn’t be sure, it seemed a couple of the doors were open and dim illumination coated the walls and floor. It flickered and wavered and with a gradual increase in his fear, Andy realised the light was candlelight.

  This is mad.

  ‘Bitch. Fucking bitch.’

  Andy jerked his head back at the shouts and tightened his hold on the plank. He closed his eyes for a moment and thought:

  Don’t forget the guy hiding in the kitchen.

  He slid along the wall, walking low. And there it was. Flat nineteen, the door slightly ajar.

  The woman’s sobs reached him, muffled, choked. As it had during his final vision, Andy’s stomach rolled.

  You fucking bastard.

  He peered through the crack between door and frame and could just make out the line of the woman’s legs, white in the moonlight. The man was straddling her stomach, leaning forward, calling her a fucking bitch, telling her to take it in her mouth.

  Andy shifted his angle. The man’s left hand wasn’t visible. From Andy’s point of view, the man’s arm stretched beyond the doorframe with the bottle of petrol presumably on the dirty carpet.

  His heart was thunder in the centre of his chest, was a tremendous pounding in his ears.

  ‘Take this. Bitch. Or get this on your face.’

  All thought ceased in Andy’s head. He shoved the door open, dashed through the hall as the man on the floor moved, hand coming up. Andy ran, swung his plank and hit the man’s hand dead centre.

  The rapist screeched, the bottle flew, hit the wall and exploded. In one movement, Andy smashed his plank against the man’s head, swung himself one hundred and eighty degrees and ducked.

  There was nobody in the kitchen.

  The figure on the floor made a noise somewhere between a word, a shout and a scream. Andy jerked around, inhaled the stink of the petrol soaking into the wall and carpet and brought his plank down on the bastard’s face.

  Bone broke and blood splattered the wood. Andy hit him again and the woman’s screams bashed off the walls in a ceaseless note. Movement spun at Andy’s left side.

  He ducked and swung and missed a rat dashing through the kitchen. Andy entered the little room, swinging his plank and quickly checking each still corner. No second man was visible; he dashed back to the woman and the rapist. The woman had slid to the wall below the window and had pulled her legs up to her chest. Andy’s words—it’s okay, you’re safe—lay stuck in his mouth and a distant voice mused in his head that the woman was really only a teenage girl. He stared at her and wondered briefly if she looked slightly familiar. She lowered her head, weeping, and lank hair covered her face. Andy prodded the figure on the floor. The man’s arm fell from his chest, he loosed a sigh that made blood bubble from his mouth and that was all.

  Andy squatted. No emotion came upon seeing that the attacker was dead. His nose was a pile of broken bone, blood and cartilage. The wood had stabbed one eye; a large sliver jutted from it, and a slight dent marked the middle of his forehead.

  Andy stood and realised his legs were about to collapse. The woman’s screams ran around and around and movement hit Andy’s eyes. He spun and swung at the same time; a punch struck his stomach and he shoved his plank downwards as hard as he could.

  It hit bone and something that made a hollow clang. Andy’s other hand shot up, hit the thing that made the strange sound and pushed.

  The knife slid into the man’s mid-section. Blood immediately coated Andy’s hand in a hot puddle. The stink of the man’s breath coated his face. Weight pressed Andy’s forearm and pushed him forward; the man fell back, coughing, howling. He hit the wall, slid along it to the hall and disappeared towards the front door. Andy took a few lurching steps as if to follow, saw the open cupboard door and realised the second man had been hiding in there.

  ‘Bastard,’ he whispered.

  His legs gave way as the woman in the other room fell silent. Something hot and wet touched his hand. He lowered his gaze.

  Thank you, Andy. Thank you so much.

  You’re really here?

  Yes. I’m sorry.

  No worries.

  More wet stuff touched his hand. He sensed the woman standing in the hall, watching him. He wanted to speak, to tell her to be careful. The words wouldn’t come. With a huge effort, Andy lifted his head, focused on the woman’s face in the little moonlight and managed a final smile.

  He fell to the dirty carpet, hands still on the handle of the knife deep in his stomach.

  Twenty

  Stu crashed against the window. It rattled but held. Inside, flickering light bounced against the glass.

  The running steps were still coming. Images, not words, told him when the sound of the steps changed from hitting road to pounding on the stretch of tatty grass behind him, he’d have a few seconds before they reached him.

  ‘Hey. Inside. Open the fucking window.’

  A shocked scream answered him.

  ‘Open the window,’ Stu yelled.

  He hammered his fists against it again and someone bellowed from the other side.

  ‘Who are you? What the hell is going on?’

  Karen. That’s Karen.

  ‘Karen? It’s Stu. Let me in.’

  Inside Karen struggled with something, then coughed as she pulled curtains out of the way. He caught sight of her for a second. Her face was a strained, white shape. Dirt coated it in streaks.

  ‘Karen,’ Stu shouted.

  She pushed against the window. It held firm. She pushed at the bottom of the frame and the window slid up a few inches.

  ‘More, Karen. Let me in.’

  He gripped the frame as she did. Together, they pushed and the window rose with a ghastly scrape. Behind Stu, the crash of the running steps changed and terror exploded in his chest.

  They were on the grass.

  ‘Up, fucking up,’ he screeched.

  They pushed together. The window jammed.

  That’s not even a two foot gap, Stu thought.

  He boosted himself up, shoved his arms through and Karen took hold of his hands, crying, shouting his name.

  Freezing fingers pulled his ankles.

  Stu screamed his horror, his outrage. Karen yanked him. His stomach scraped against the window frame and the pain was a world away.

  The hands were moving higher, seemingly dozens reaching for his knees and beyond. Fingers dug into his shin muscles, then his kneecaps. Karen’s hands were on his arms, then his shoulders. She howled against his ear; he wrapped both arms around her, bent his knees as much as he could and kicked backwards.

  The hands behind lost their hold for a fraction of a second. Stu shot forward when Karen pulled and they both crashed to the floor.

  ‘Up,’ Karen panted, pulling his hand.

  They ran in a bizarre crouch before making it upright close to the door. Stu saw t
he dozens of corpses at the tables. Karen yanked on his arm. He faced her, dumb with fear.

  ‘Come on,’ she shrieked.

  Dead kids, he thought with stupid wonder. He looked back to the tables and each body had vanished, leaving empty chairs all thick with dust. Then they hit the door and corridor beyond.

  ‘This way,’ Karen shouted, pulling him.

  They sprinted as a crash rang from behind. Glass smashed. They reached the corner and ran to the halfway point of the next corridor. It opened to a foyer, then the school’s main entrance.

  Karen stopped and Stu tried to speak through his gasps. She pressed a dirty finger to her lips, then kicked at a door. It swung open. Holding Stu’s hand, Karen pushed gingerly at the main doors. One opened and fresh air hit Stu’s face. Behind them, the door Karen had kicked showed an office and more windows. Praying the decoy would work, Stu let Karen take him outside. They ran alongside the school building, reached an empty car park, then grass. Without speaking, they sprinted hand in hand across the field to the large hedges.

  Stu collapsed there, panting and fighting the pain of the stitch in his side. He spat excess saliva, studied the main building and listened for the sound of running feet. There were none.

  He fell against Karen, buried his face in her neck and welcomed the warmth and simple scent of her.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ he said. Her heart thrummed against his chest and her arms wrapped around him. ‘What the hell is going on? Who were those kids and where the hell did they go?’

  Karen said nothing for a moment. Stu held her tighter. The cold dried the sweat coating his body. Then Karen spoke in the whisper of a frightened child.

  ‘They were dead, Stu. They were all dead.’

  Her arms encircled him and the heavy smell of their sweat and fear filled Stu’s nose. He breathed as slowly as he could.

  ‘We need to find the others. We should get back to the pub,’ he said.

  ‘They were dead,’ she whispered.

  Stu stared at the shape of the school, the building he’d known as well as his own home for seven years. The school had always been familiar even after the remodelling they’d given it a few years back. It had always been a welcome sight because of what it meant and what it had been to him.

  Now it was a sleeping beast across the grass and its broken windows stared at them.

  Dozens of running feet smacked on the tarmac.

  Without a word, Stu and Karen linked hands and ran.

  Twenty One

  Mick shifted position in the flowerbed, pressing himself against the low wall that blocked the grounds from the pavement and road. He couldn’t be sure of it, but suspected he’d been there for at least twenty minutes, sitting in the cold, surrounded by dead flowers, desperately trying to think. None of this made sense; there’d been no sight of any other people since the guy at Atherstone Park, and his mobile was a useless chunk in his pocket. He couldn’t even check the time let alone phone anyone. Even so, he’d kept looking at the blank screen while running from the park, praying something would show on the display.

  Praying didn’t help. He’d got this far and been forced to stop through exhaustion. Cursing his lack of fitness, Mick shifted position again. His head was only an inch or so from the top of the wall. He had to hope the thick shadows in the garden covered him from view.

  He craned his head around and gazed at the house behind him. He knew where he was and he knew these houses even though he hadn’t walked on Thorpe Road in God knows how long. The road and therefore the house had been part of his life for years. That didn’t seem to matter now. This wasn’t Dalry.

  But it was on the surface. It was exactly Dalry. Same streets, same buildings, same green spaces. It was exactly Dalry in its skin. Below, though, it was somewhere else, somewhere wrong.

  There were no lights anywhere. Most of the streetlights he’d passed were smashed as were many of the windows in the houses. No cars had passed, so he hadn’t seen any headlights. This version of Dalry wasn’t his hometown.

  It’s a nightmare, he thought and shivered. The cold bit into his flesh and the constant drip from his nose had congealed to a frozen layer on his upper lip.

  Mick hugged himself and planned the rest of his journey. From here to the foot of the bridge would take a bare minute if he ran it. Getting over the bridge and beyond the roundabout, another two minutes, maybe. Then from the road, around the multi storey car park to Long Gate in four minutes.

  He could be back in the pub in less than ten minutes. All he had to do was get moving.

  ‘Simple,’ he whispered and grinned bitterly. Simple? What the hell was that when you were taken from the pub to a nightmare in a second and then maybe killed a man in self-defence? Simple was bollocks.

  Something new caught his attention. Mick rose as much as he dared and listened.

  Someone was coming

  Mick dug his fingers into the cold stone and gripped the end of the baseball bat with his other hand. The person was coming closer. Mick pushed himself through the earth to the end of the wall and risked a look around the corner. There wasn’t anything moving on Thorpe Road and the only sound was the advancing runner. Whoever they were, it sounded as if they were coming towards the bridge which meant they’d pass his wall in a matter of seconds.

  Mick pulled back behind the wall and held his breath.

  Feet striking pavement met the runner’s panting breath. Then they were level with the low wall, passing by without a pause. Mick counted to ten, looked out at the road again and saw the runner crossing to the other side. Their arms were tucked tight against their side, their long legs clad in black jeans, a tree branch held in one shining white hand.

  Dumb wonder filled Mick and the word fell out of his mouth before he could stop it.

  ‘Will?’

  The man whirled around, wood coming up. He lowered it and a great burst of gratitude exploded in Mick’s heart.

  Weeping, he jumped over the wall and ran to Will. The men embraced, Mick rubbed at his eyes and held Will hard.

  ‘Jesus Christ, man. This is nuts. This is fucking nuts,’ Mick said.

  ‘No shit,’ Will said and Mick laughed. It didn’t matter that his laugh was too loud. Will was here and he was all right.

  ‘Karen,’ Will said, pulling away from Mick and staring at him. ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘No. Nobody.’ Mick waved his bat around. ‘Well, almost nobody. There was a guy …I …he came at me with this, man.’ He waved the bat around.

  ‘He’s dead?’

  Mick struggled for an answer. The word dead meant nothing. For now, that was.

  ‘I think so. I didn’t check.’

  ‘Where?’ Will said.

  ‘Atherstone Park. I was there. No idea how. I was there; I could see my old house, but it was wrong. Everything’s wrong here. And this guy, he jumped over the fence and came at me. I got the bat off him and ran.’

  ‘Shit,’ Will whispered. He stared at the silent houses. ‘I got attacked by a bunch of kids. It was in my old house. I mean, where my parents live.’

  He took a breath and told Mick his story. As Will described the mocking laugh rising out of the water and from the other side of the river, an ugly fear turned Mick’s testicles cold and then slid upwards through his body.

  ‘This isn’t right, is it? I mean, none of this is right. We should still be in the pub, talking about Geri, not in this fucking …’ Mick trailed off. Words seemed like too much effort.

  ‘I need to find Karen,’ Will said and an implacable hardness covered Will’s face. Mick understood it. He would have felt the same if Jodie had been involved.

  ‘They’ll go back to the pub,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Where else is there to go?’

  He watched Will’s face and prayed the others were safe and already in the pub.

  Eventually, Will nodded. ‘I hope you’re right, fatboy.’

  Mick managed a laugh. ‘
So do I, Elton.’

  Together, they crossed to the other side of the road and headed to the bridge that would take them back to the pub.

  Twenty Two

  Karen stood beside the window, not wanting to touch the frame or the narrow ledge in front of it. Both were cracked, the dirty wood split in several places. Through the glass, she made out a little of the pavement and the sight was dispiriting. Pavement and road were full of holes; rubble lay in piles and rubbish presumably from overturned bins drifted past the pub when the wind blew.

  Inside the pub was no better. Most of the seats and tables had been smashed apart or removed; horrendous stains covered the floor and nearly all of the bottles behind the bar had been smashed. Stu had pointed out that whatever had happened here must have occurred a while ago. There wasn’t any scent of spilled alcohol and no wet patches near the broken bottles. His theory hadn’t helped to calm her. If whatever was going on had happened a while ago, then where the hell were they? More, where was everyone else?

  And most of all, where was Will?

  The thought wouldn’t go. It stabbed into her head over and over, a million pricks of the same needle. She folded her arms over her breasts and focused on her breathing for a moment. It helped a little.

  Stu crossed to her from the wrecked bar, clutching a bottle of water. Karen took it, noting how cold it was and realised that was down to the outside temperature and not because it came from a working fridge.

  ‘I don’t think it’s fresh,’ Stu said and Karen lifted the bottle up to the moonlight. The illumination wasn’t strong enough for her to read the label.

  ‘Not fresh like you’d get normally,’ Stu said. ‘I think it’s been refilled from a tap.’

  Karen smiled; it felt thick and greasy.

  ‘I’ll give it a miss, thanks,’ she said. Stu took the bottle and placed it on the remains of a table.

  ‘What time have you got?’ he asked.

  She checked her watch, staring at it until she could be sure what it read.

  ‘9:30,’ she said and saw her thoughts on Stu’s pale face.

  ‘Around the same time we were talking about Geri, wasn’t it?’ He gestured to the wall above the bar. Karen followed his finger. A clock was nailed to the wall, the face cracked but the hands still visible.